NetBSD Bloghttp://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/feed/entries/atom2015-03-31T08:47:22+00:00Apache Roller (incubating)http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/pkgsrc_for_illumospkgsrc for Illumosimil2011-04-18T07:21:45+00:002011-07-31T10:03:59+00:00The Illumos project is "a community maintained derivative of the OpenSolaris ON source, including open source replacements for closed bits, and additional changes" (from <a href="http://www.illumos.org/">http://www.illumos.org/</a>).
A couple of month ago, the Illumos community launched "The Illumos pkgsrc project", thus communicating for the first time on pkgsrc being officially supported by a SunOS derivative.
<p>
<p>
The Illumos project is "a community maintained derivative of the OpenSolaris ON source, including open source replacements for closed bits, and additional changes" (from <a href="http://www.illumos.org/">http://www.illumos.org/</a>).
A couple of month ago, the Illumos community launched "The Illumos pkgsrc project", thus communicating for the first time on pkgsrc being officially supported by a SunOS derivative.
</p>
<p>
First thing done was a bootstrap wrapper written by Mads Worsøe Duun, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/theillumospkgsrcproject/ipp-download">ipp</a>. This wrapper permits to easily prepare a pkgsrc environment on an OpenIndiana/Illumos/SunOS 5.11 platforms.
</p>
<p>
At some point i got involved into the project initiated by Mads, and we quickly got a build zone from OpenIndiana in order to bring some reality to the project. After a month of work, we finally got about 6000 packages built for this platform, and eventually were given a hosting zone for those.
</p>
<p>
Also, Mads just released a <code>pkgadd(1)</code> package which includes a pre-configured <code>pkgin</code> binary so those packages are immediately available for use.
As of today, it is possible to install more than 6000 pkgsrc binary packages on a SunOS 5.11 based platform, as easily as in NetBSD, DragonFly BSD or MINIX.
</p>
<p>
Many thanks to everyone who provided patches and workarounds in order to make this possible. Special thanks to the OpenIndiana crowd for providing us the build and hosting zones.
</p>
<p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.illumos.org/projects/worsoe">The Illumos pkgsrc project</a></li>
<li><a href="http://pkgsrc-repo.uk.openindiana.org/reports/last/report.html">pkgsrc-2011Q1 bulk build report</a></li>
<li><a href="http://pkgsrc-repo.uk.openindiana.org/2011Q1/">pkgsrc-2011Q1 binary packages repository</a></li>
<li><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/theillumospkgsrcproject/ipp-download">pkgadd(1) startup package and ipp downloads</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.illumos.org/projects/worsoe/wiki">Work-in-progress Wiki</a></li>
</ul>
</p>http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/pkgin_0_4_0pkgin 0.4.0imil2011-02-14T13:53:11+00:002011-02-14T14:57:50+00:00<p>After a year of PR's, feedbacks and various fixes, pkgin 0.4.0 is now available and its package, <code>pkgtools/pkgin</code> is up-to-date.</p><p>After a year of PR's, feedbacks and various fixes, pkgin 0.4.0 is now available and its package, <code>pkgtools/pkgin</code>, is up-to-date.</p>
<p>For the record, pkgin is a binary package manager aimed at simplifying manipulation of 3rd party software available as <code>pkgsrc</code> binaries. Its usage mimics similar tools like Debian's <code>apt</code> or RedHat's <code>yum</code>. While pkgin does not pretend to be as polished as those well known tools, it is now used in production in various companies (including mine), where clients cannot be told to "wait for the end of the build" ;)</p>
<p>0.4.0 brings some features that have been requested during the past year such as <i>download-only</i>, package reinstallation, <i>chroot</i> (in order to install packages to a chrooted environment), and bandwith calculation; thanks to Baptiste Daroussin for those two.</p>
<p>pkgin 0.4.0 also has now native support for MINIX 3 thanks to Gautam B.T. from MINIX, and better SunOS 5.1[0-1] support.</p>
<p>As of today, i've built and tested pkgin on the following platforms:
<ul>
<li>NetBSD 4.0</li>
<li>NetBSD 5.{0,1}</li>
<li>NetBSD current</li>
<li>DragonFly BSD 2.0 to 2.8</li>
<li>DragonFly BSD current</li>
<li>Solaris 10/SunOS 5.10</li>
<li>Opensolaris/SunOS 5.11</li>
<li>Debian GNU/Linux 5 and 6</li>
<li>Mac OS X 10.{5,6}</li>
<li>MINIX 3.1.8</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>Last but not least, pkgin no longer depends on SQLite package, as the <a href="http://www.sqlite.org/amalgamation.html">Amalgamation</a> source file is now part of pkgin's tree. That means 0.4.0 binary installation will be as simple as pkg_add http://your.favorite.repository/All/pkgin-0.4.0.tgz</p>
<p>As always, testing and feedback is more than appreciated</p>http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/pkgsrccon_2010_more_than_pkgsrcpkgsrcCon 2010 - More Than pkgsrcMarc Balmer2010-06-15T12:35:14+00:002010-06-15T12:35:14+00:00pkgsrcCon 2010, the technical conference for people working on pkgsrc, took place may 28 - 30 at the Departement Informatik, University of Basel, Switzerland. Packed with interesting talks and in-depth discussions about the matter, the confence was a great success.
<p>
pkgsrcCon 2010, the technical conference for people working on pkgsrc, took place may 28 - 30 at the Departement Informatik, University of Basel, Switzerland. Packed with interesting talks and in-depth discussions about the matter, the confence was a great success.
<p>
This year's conference brought a new aspect to pkgsrcCon: The discussion of packing third party software in general. Not only the usual suspects attended this years conference, but also ports maintainers from OpenBSD and FreeBSD. From the OpenBSD team Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse and Landry Breuil joined, Erwin Lansing and Beat Gätzi represented FreeBSD. Jasper and Landry had registered for pkgsrcCon quite a while ago, Jasper even gave a presentation on how the OpenBSD ports system and team works and what the differences to pkgsrc are.
<p>
While attending a FreeBSD ports session during BSDCan in Ottawa and being an OpenBSD ports veteran of many years myself, I realized that all three teams have similar goals, but try to solve them in very different ways and all face more or less the same problems (e.g. patches not being accepted by upstream). So I asked Erwin Lansing, a FreeBSD portmeister, if he would like to join pkgsrcCon to start a discussion among all three teams. There is always something you can steal from the other groups and be it only the diffs to make a piece of software run on BSD.
<p>
During the conference, I moderated a panel session to figure out the current state, goals, and problems of the three projects, which was a highly interesting and lively discussion. In fact people so much liked the idea of inter-project discussions that this will continue somehow. One idea was a BSD third party software session during EuroBSDCon or to hold a pkgsrcCon right after an OpenBSD ports hackathon.
<p>
Of course pkgsrc specific topics were on the agenda as well and we got some deep insight and status updates on our favourite packaging system. NetBSD developer Michael van Elst presented even one more packaging system, OpenPKG.
<p>
All in all we spent three interesting days in Basel and we have to thank Vera Hardmeier for the excellent organisation, Petra Zeidler for putting together an interesting conference program and, last, but not least, Prof. Dr. Christian Tschudin for letting us use the rooms at his institute.
http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/the_pkgsrc_2010q1_releaseThe pkgsrc-2010Q1 ReleaseMatthias Scheler2010-04-20T19:50:33+00:002010-04-20T19:50:33+00:00<p>
The pkgsrc developers are happy to announce the new pkgsrc-2010Q1 release, which has support for even more packages than previous releases. Some major packages have also been updated in this release.
</p>
<p>
At the same time, the pkgsrc-2009Q4 release has been deprecated, and continuing engineering starts on the pkgsrc-2010Q1 release.
</p>
<p>
Some highlights of the new pkgsrc-2010Q1 release are:
<ul>
<li>we have almost finished the transition to DESTDIR installation, where a staging directory is used to make a binary package, which is then managed by the pkg_install tools</li>
<li>gnome has been updated to version 2.28.1, kde to 4.3.5</li>
<li>we have started changing packages to default to KDE4 instead of KDE3. For now, the old packages are still available as *-kde3 e.g. <code>amarok</code> is the KDE4 package, and <code>amarok-kde3</code> is the KDE3 one.</li>
<li> the default python package is now python26 </li>
<li>squid 3.1.1 is now in pkgsrc, with some support for IPv6 </li>
<li> php 5.3.x has been added </li>
<li> The conversion from the last teTeX distribution to texlive (currently 2009) is still in progress.</li>
<li> many, many packages have been updated to newer versions, to take advantage of fixes and improved functionality. The following
versions of packages are included in the <br />pkgsrc-2010Q1 release:
<ul>
<li> apache-2.2.15 </li>
<li> bzr-2.0.3 </li>
<li> firefox-3.6.3 </li>
<li> git-1.6.6.2 (the package is known as scmgit in pkgsrc) </li>
<li> gnome-2.28.1 </li>
<li> kde-4.3.5 </li>
<li> mercurial-1.5.1 </li>
<li> mysql-5.1.44nb2 </li>
<li> openoffice-3.1.1 and openoffice-bin-3.2.0 </li>
<li> perl-5.10.1 </li>
<li> postgresql-8.3.9nb2 and postgresql-8.4.2 </li>
<li> python-2.5.4nb5 and python-2.6.4nb4 </li>
<li> ruby-1.8.7.174nb4 </li>
<li> samba-3.3.12 </li>
<li> seamonkey-2.0.4 </li>
<li> subversion-1.6.9nb1 </li>
<li> wireshark-1.2.7 </li>
<li> zope-3.3.1 </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li> other notable changes include
<ul>
<li> we bid a fond thanks, and farewell, to some old favourites,
such as php4 and related packages, the old vmware modules
packages, sun's jdk and jre versions 1.4 and 1.5, the ISC
dhcp 3.x packages, galeon, swing, typolight-2.6 and tcl-8.3 </li>
<li> the addition of some interesting, pertinent, and shiny
packages such as tn3270 (:-) - brought over from NetBSD's
src archive), mingw, colordiff, easygit, monotone-el, swt,
fuse-bindfs, php-5.3, samba-3.3, xymon, musca, and qt4-mng </li>
<li> notable updates to packages such as bsd and gnu tar, amarok,
lame, mpg123, mysql, openldap, postgresql, sqlite, boehm-gc,
boost, doxygen, fossil, glib, libev, libffi, memcached, nspr,
nss, pango, pcre, rt3, readline, swig, xulrunner, vim, qemu,
chicken, mono, parrot, openjdk7, python, php5, squeak, clamav,
dovecot, fetchmail, getmail, gmime, linmilter, mew, sendmail,
spamassassin, squirrelmail, thunderbird, octave, pari,
calibre, dhcpcd, gupnp, nmap, rdist6, rsync, rtorrent, tnftpd,
tor, transmission, unbound, aide, netpgp, openssl, bash, osh,
tcsh, bacula, cdrtools, memtester, grub, pstree, rasqal,
openbox, firefox, ikiwiki, lighttpd, mediawiki, nginx, squid,
seamonkey, typolight, gtk2, xsnow </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li> the <b>Package of the Quarter</b> award is hereby awarded to qemu, nominated by Joerg Sonnenberger, and samba33, nominated by Matthias Scheler. </li>
</ul>
The list of platforms supported by pkgsrc is AIX, BSD/OS, Darwin (Mac OS X), DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, HP/UX, IRIX, Interix, Linux, NetBSD, OSF1, OpenBSD, QNX and SunOS (Solaris). Haiku support is almost ready to be added to pkgsrc. We are aware that support for some platforms is at a more mature stage than others, and would like to encourage feedback from users and developers on our more esoteric platforms.
<ul>
<li> continuing engineering on the &quot;stable&quot; releases of pkgsrc continues
to work well, and our release engineering team has done a marvelous
job in pulling up changes to the stable release. Our thanks go to
Matthias Scheler, Lubomir Sedlacik, Tyler Retzlaff, and S.P.Zeidler
for all the hard work they do in sanity checking pullup requests, and
managing the stable releases in pkgsrc. </li>
<li> constant bulk building on a number of platforms has improved our
ability to identify potential areas of concern, and to correct them
sooner. It has also improved our ability to make binary packages
available, and we are working on ways to improve this further. For
more information, please refer to the pkgsrc-bulk mailing list,
archives available at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-bulk/">http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-bulk/</a> </li>
<li> the number of packages has grown from 9100 to 9315; the number of supported platforms is currently 14. NetBSD, on all its supported architectures, is considered to be one pkgsrc platform. </li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>
As always, we'd like to encourage users of the packages collection to
audit for security problems at least every day using <code>pkg_admin audit</code>
- this will provide notification of any packages which are vulnerable
to exploit. <code>pkg_admin</code> is part of the pkg_install tools.
</p>
<p>
The pkgsrc-security team do a marvelous job in tracking notifications
of vulnerabilities in packages, and disseminating this information,
and our sincere thanks go to them for this essential work.
</p>
<p>
We'd also really appreciate it if people would install the
<a href="http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/pkgtools/pkgsurvey/README.html">pkgsrc/pkgtools/pkgsurvey</a> package, and then run the pkgsurvey script
for us. This will forward us a list of the packages installed on that
machine, and the operating system and release level of the operating
system. The results will be kept confidential, but the output will
help us analyse the packages that are most used.
</p>
<p>
The source tar files for the new release can be found at:
</p>
<p align="center">
<a rel="nofollow" href="ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2010Q1/pkgsrc.tar.gz">ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2010Q1/pkgsrc.tar.gz</a>
<br /
<br />
or
<br />
<br />
<a rel="nofollow" href="ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2010Q1/pkgsrc.tar.bz2">ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2010Q1/pkgsrc.tar.bz2</a>
<p>
<p>
You can also use the <code>pkgsrc-2010Q1</code> tag to check it out yourself from <code>anoncvs.NetBSD.org</code> or any of the mirrors.
</p>
<p>
Alistair Crooks<br />
On behalf of the pkgsrc developers
</p>http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/pkgsrc_solaris_and_5000_binarypkgsrc, Solaris, and 5000 binary packagesAlistair Crooks2009-10-19T15:23:27+00:002012-04-10T21:36:09+00:00<p>
Jonathan Perkin has posted an interesting blog entry entitled
<a href="http://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/apt-get-and-5000-packages-for-solaris10x86.html">"apt-get" and 5,000 packages for Solaris10/x86</a>
about using pkgsrc and the binary package manager <a href="http://imil.net/pkgin/">pkgin</a> on Solaris 10/x86. In pkgsrc, we can get conditioned to the fact that package management, in a coherent, well-controlled way; it's nice to see this gaining further traction in Solaris circles too.
</p><p>
Jonathan Perkin has posted an interesting blog entry entitled
<a href="http://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/apt-get-and-5000-packages-for-solaris10x86.html">"apt-get" and 5,000 packages for Solaris10/x86</a>
about using pkgsrc and the binary package manager <a href="http://imil.net/pkgin/">pkgin</a> on Solaris 10/x86. In pkgsrc, we can get conditioned to the fact that package management, in a coherent, well-controlled way; it's nice to see this gaining further traction in Solaris circles too.
</p>
<p>
Oh, and on a historical note - Solaris was the first non-NetBSD platform for pkgsrc. I wonder if anyone remembers when it was committed (without resorting to cvs logs)?
</p>http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/pkgin_a_tool_to_managepkgin, a tool to manage pkgsrc binary packagesimil2009-05-27T13:38:04+00:002009-05-27T13:49:53+00:00<p>From the day I began using NetBSD I felt that there was a need for a binary
package manager. pkgsrc is great of course, I use it, love it and contribute
to, but I'm not brave enough to build my entire environment with it. Of
course the esteemed <code>pkg_add(1)</code> and <code>pkg_delete(1)</code>
can handle binary packages installation, but when it comes to upgrades,
binary packages manipulation is far from being straightforward.</p><p>
From the day I began using NetBSD I felt that there was a need for a binary
package manager. pkgsrc is great of course, I use it, love it and contribute
to, but I'm not brave enough to build my entire environment with it. Of
course the esteemed <code>pkg_add(1)</code> and <code>pkg_delete(1)</code>
can handle binary packages installation, but when it comes to upgrades,
binary packages manipulation is far from being straightforward.
</p>
<p>
For many years, Linux has had tools like <code>apt</code>, <code>yum</code>
and <code>pacman</code> that are able to handle packages installation
properly using remote repositories. With such tools, packages installation,
removal and upgrade are really simple, there is no need to <code>cvs
checkout</code>, <code>make(1)</code> or worse in order to have a usable
environment within a few minutes. I felt that this was something which might have
impacted on a persons decision to install NetBSD.
</p>
<p>
That's why I started the <a href="http://imil.net/pkgin/">pkgin</a> project
3 months ago. <a href="http://imil.net/pkgin/">Pkgin</a> (pronounced
"pay-kay-djin") is aimed at being an <code>apt / yum</code> like tool for
managing pkgsrc binary packages. It relies on <code>pkg_summary(5)</code>
for installation, removal and upgrade of packages and associated
dependencies, using a remote repository.
</p>
<p>
At the moment, <a href="http://imil.net/pkgin/">pkgin</a> is available in
<a href="http://pkgsrc-wip.sourceforge.net/">pkgsrc-wip</a>, not yet in the official <a href="http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/pkgsrc/">pkgsrc</a> tree, as it is still in a test phase and the code obviously moves a lot. Expect the first <a href="http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/pkgsrc/">pkgsrc</a> release to land around June.
</p>
<p>
For the brave, latest code is available via CVS, using <code>:pserver:anoncvs@cvs.gcu.info:/cvs</code> as the <i>CVSROOT</i> and <code>anoncvs</code> as the password. Please do not hesitate to give feedback, but try not to ask to change its entire behaviour as the choices have already been discussed with many NetBSD developers.
</p>http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/pkgsrc_2009q1_has_been_branchedPkgsrc-2009Q1 has been branchedAlistair Crooks2009-04-07T16:46:24+00:002009-04-07T17:21:56+00:00<p>Just a quick note to say that pkgsrc has been branched for pkgsrc-2009Q1, and has already had some pullups - thanks to the pkgsrc-releng folks.</p>
<p>We're going to sort out the release announcement now, and get that out around the same time as the binary packages get built.</p>
<p>Thanks to all involved in making this branch happen.</p>
<p>Enjoy pkgsrc-2009Q1, folks!</p>http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/pkgsrc_2009q1_freeze_starts_onPkgsrc-2009Q1 Freeze starts on March 22nd, 23:59 UTCAlistair Crooks2009-03-22T05:05:01+00:002009-03-22T05:05:01+00:00<p>In preparation for the pkgsrc-2009Q1 branch, pkgsrc will be frozen for new packages and infrastructure changes, starting on Sunday March 22nd, at 23:59 UTC.</p>
<p>Some background to our freezes: pkgsrc makes four releases a year, named after the quarter in which all the work took place, and the quarter in which the packages themselves could last have been updated. The release name is thus 2009Q1, 2009Q2, etc. So that we can stabilise packages before the branch is created, we institute a freeze on new functionality - no new packages, and the infrastructure itself does not get changed. This means that we can take a look at the results of bulk build runs, and fix up any loose ends in the packages themselves, without having to worry about the basic building blocks of pkgsrc changing from under us - we have a stable platform to build upon.</p>
<p>It always happens that third party software vendors want to release a new version of their software just after we've entered the freeze. When that happens, we ask the pkgsrc developers to make a judgement call on it - they are the ones who will be maintaining this, after all - and if they think it needs to be updated, we ask them to get approval from the pkgsrc PMC. Again, to minimise the effect on other packages, we like to limit this to leaf packages. These are packages which can be changed easily with no consequences - packages which are not pre-requisites for any other package.</p>
<p>In general, pkgsrc tries to be conservative without being out of date in the versions of the packages. Trying to stay on the bleeding edge may be great fun at times, and does ensure early access to new features, but there are consequences for others in the stability of such packages. We have some packages which are maintained like this - usually, they have a -devel suffix - but the vast majority of packages are known to be good versions. We know, because we run those versions ourselves.</p>
<p>So what does pkgsrc-2009Q1 have in store for us? New pkg_install tools, speedups for the buildlink3 infrastructure, gnome 2.26, and many more things.</p>
<p>Look for pkgsrc-2009Q1 coming to a repository near you in a couple of weeks time.</p>http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/german_perlworkshop_and_a_netbsdGerman Perlworkshop and a NetBSD related presentationrhaen2009-03-06T11:18:33+00:002009-03-06T11:37:22+00:00<p>I attended the German Perlworkshop from 25th February to 27th February in Frankfurt. The German Perlworkshop follows the tradition of the YAPC conferences. It's listed on their webpage, however the name has been changed to represent the German localisation. </p>
<p>I gave two presentations about the different usage of Perl, one was related to the NetBSD project. I maintain quite a lot of Perl packages inside the pkgsrc repository and run our Perl package update list, too. As I encounter frequent problems with our Perl modules, like missing ChangeLogs, incorrect version numbering for pkgsrc, broken dependencies, etc I decided to give a talk about these problems. It's called "Maintaining the be*st" and it deals with some of the different aspects in maintaining Perl packages for pkgsrc. I translated the slides to English, so all the English readers of this blog are able to read them. The audio recording was done during the presentation, however, it is in German.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/~rhaen/presentations/2009-DeutscherPerlWorkshop/Maintaining_the_best.pdf">Maintaining the best (German|PDF)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/~rhaen/presentations/2009-DeutscherPerlWorkshop/Maintaining_the_best_english.pdf">Maintaining the best (English|PDF)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/~rhaen/presentations/2009-DeutscherPerlWorkshop/Maintaining_the_best.mp3">Maintaining the best (Audio recording in German|MP3 ~21mb)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/~rhaen/presentations/2009-DeutscherPerlWorkshop/Reverse_Testing.pdf">Reverse Testing (German|PDF)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/~rhaen/presentations/2009-DeutscherPerlWorkshop/Reverse_Testing_english.pdf">Reverse Testing (English|PDF)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/~rhaen/presentations/2009-DeutscherPerlWorkshop/Reverse_Testing.mp3">Reverse Testing (Audio recording in German|MP3 ~9mb)</a></li>
</ul>